The Epoch Init System is an init system for Linux designed with ease of configuration and non-intrusiveness in mind. It has no external dependencies besides libc and pthreads on a Linux 2.6+ system, though a working /bin/sh is suggested. It's suitable for large and small Linux distributions, but was designed with a focus on smaller Linux systems. It's features include a log system capable of recording boot events before the filesystem is made writable, ASCII runlevels, a convenient, single configuration file setup, automatic hostname setting at boot, automatic virtual filesystem mounting (think /proc), PID file support, stuck job killing during bootup and shutdown, integrated color greeting banner support, and automatic service restart support, to keep vital services running at all times.

Finit is a small SysV init replacement with process supervision similar to that of daemontools and runit. Its focus is on small and embedded GNU/Linux systems, although it is fully functional on standard server and desktop installations. Finit is fast because it starts services in parallel; it then supervises and automatically restarts them if they fail. This can be extended upon with custom callbacks for all services, hooks into the boot process, or plugins to extend the functionality and adapt Finit to your needs. Finit is not only fast, it’s arguably one of the easiest to get started with. A complete system can be booted with one simple configuration file.

init is the lightweight BSD-style init and syslog system used in Arachsys Linux. It includes a number of small utilities, including a minimal init, a wrapper for turning simple commands into well-behaved background daemons, and a simple but flexible syslog implementation. The design aim for this suite is to provide a toolkit of small components which can be joined together with standard shell scripting to produce a complete system, rather than the large, monolithic, inflexible daemons which are typical elsewhere. Despite the focus on minimalism, the init and daemon tools can be used to implement fast, parallel, dependency-based booting, and are used for this purpose in Arachsys Linux.

pmtr starts your application daemons (not the system daemons) at system boot and lets you dynamically add, remove, or edit jobs at runtime. What makes pmtr different from sysvinit and similar systems is that all your jobs are defined in one configuration file, and the syntax is friendly.